Process flow

Question

question

Óscar Manuel CMN asked Apr 30, '20 Óscar Manuel CMN commented May 8, '20

Process flow

The model has four processors and 2 operators as seen in the following image.

I intend for operators to go to the sortest queue, pick up an item and take it to the processor connected to that queue. I have 3 problems:

1. Both operators load the same processor simultaneously even though the maximun content is 1.

2. I doný know how to tell them to go to the sortest queue. I tried that in the "pull from list" it was ordered according to "queuesixe" but it does not do it correctly.

3. Lastly, I would like the operator who has gone to a queue to remain in that work center (queue + processor) until the number of items in the queue when he arrived has been consumed. To carry this out, I suppose that a label can be made that saves the contents of the queue when he arrived and that repeats the process (load + travel + unload + wait for event ) a number of times equal to the numer of items tjat were when he arrived.

Thanks.

I attach the model:

caso2.fsm

Software Version:

FlexSim 19.0.0

flexsim 19.0.0

1588260350084.png (50.9 KiB)

caso2.fsm (91.7 KiB)

· 2

tannerp commented · Apr 30, 2020 at 04:17 PM

@Óscar Manuel CMN,

Is this different from your other question or would it be okay if we worked with this one and deleted the other one?

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Óscar Manuel CMN tannerp commented · Apr 30, 2020 at 04:20 PM

The other question is a part of this, so if we work with tis question alone, perfect

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Answer 1 · 2020-05-01T17:14:44Z

tannerp answered May 1, '20 Óscar Manuel CMN commented May 8, '20

Hi @Óscar Manuel CMN,

I'll do my best to answer your questions one at a time here. Sorry for taking so long to reply.

Question:

1) This problem is happening because the Process Flow does not use the 3D Object logic. So when Process Flow tells an operator to unload an item at the processor, the max content of the processor is not evaluated. To prevent this from happening, you can use zones, lists, or decide or acquire activities. I've added the appropriate Acquire Resource logic to your TaskExecuterZ1 Process Flow. The edited logic can be found in this model: oscar edited pf.fsm Let me know if you have any questions.

2) Do you want the operators to load the objects from the "Cola" queue with the fewest items? I couldn't quite figure out what you meant by this question.

3) For this logic, I think you'll need to redesign your Process Flow. I'll keep looking at this and see if I can come up with something, but the key elements are going to be acquiring the queue and then checking using a Decide activity to see if there are more boxes in that queue before releasing that queue. That way, the same operator will continue working at one queue until it's empty.

oscar-edited-pf.fsm (94.9 KiB)

· 14

Óscar Manuel CMN commented · May 02, 2020 at 10:50 AM

Thank you much for helping me.

Regarding question 2:

What I want is for an operator to extract an order from the list corresponding to the queue that has te fewest items. The other operator, must go to the next queue with fewer elements because the previous one is already busy.

I don´t know if I explained it well.

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tannerp Óscar Manuel CMN commented · May 04, 2020 at 10:08 PM

Here's an additional update on your model that should help the operators stay at one queue and also pick from the shortest queue available. Please review this model and let me know if it does what you are hoping it will do.

The key in this one is acquiring the queues based on a query that checks to see if they have items in them (WHERE boxCount > 0) and that the item count is the smallest of all the entries (ORDER BY boxCount ASC). If there isn't a queue available with boxes, the max wait timer fires and causes the token to try acquiring a queue again.

Additionally, I am pulling from the list according to specific partitions based on the queue that the operators have acquired.

The Decide activity makes sure that the queue that the operator is currently working with does not have any more boxes before releasing the queue.

One last thing to notice is that the queues push the items to the list now instead of the Process Flow. I found this easier so I could use queue and destination labels.

If you have other questions or trouble implementing this logic in other zones in your model, feel free to ask them here rather than creating a new post, so long as the questions are related to this initial post. Hopefully I didn't miss anything this time.

oscar help 2_1.fsm

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acquire-query-and-max-wait-timer.png (16.0 KiB)

order-by-resource-query.png (12.8 KiB)

pull-from-destination-query.png (19.0 KiB)

check-queue-box-count.png (8.4 KiB)

oscar-help-2-1.fsm (92.6 KiB)